These merit scholarships are being discontinued for incoming students only. Current recipients will continue to receive them.
https://www.cmu.edu/sfs/financial-aid/types/scholarships-and-grants/university.html
I wonder how this will be explained to the donors, who may have just contributed to them during the push in 2014-17.
So does this mean merit-seekers should just cross CMU off the list? Are any of the endowed scholarships merit based only, or do you have to have need to get all of those? The website doesn’t say.
The endowed scholarships are NOT merit only, per my interpretation. My son has an endowed and a presidential, as well as some outside scholarships. The presidential is regardless of need, the endowed is part of his need-based grant. The only remaining advantage at CMU is that they do allow stacking – so outside scholarship to not reduce financial aid, and all the various scholarships can stack.
But @ccprofandmomof2, to be more responsive, merit seekers probably should not look to CMU anymore.
I recently read (sorry don’t have the link) but it was on the CMU website, CMU has designated a separate $50 million endowment earmarked exclusively for student aid. Don’t remember the specifics, like what “percent” may be for merit. The gist was CMU wants those who can’t afford the school to be able to attend and they’re doing something about it.
@2331cik My impression was that all the new money was for need-based aid. None for merit. The school under President Jahanian is moving away from a merit model. I was also told this personally from a high level official at CMU. In various conversations, I tried to dissuade them from moving away from merit, because it is why my son ended up there. I feel like middle-high income families with other financial stressors (e.g. illness, caring for other relatives, etc.) really aren’t accommodated by current financial aid calculators. But this is how it is going at CMU.
On the other hand, I believe CMU is going to be more generous with FA going forward.
“Carnegie Scholarships were awarded to academically and artistically talented middle income students who qualified for little to no need-based financial aid”.
Well, this is really unfortunate…
For families in the doughnut, who are doing well enough to have a decent living but not well enough to shell out $75K a year, these types of scholarships were a small ray of hope and for the lucky ones who did get accepted to CMU and were offered this merit aid, I am sure a great reward for their diligence and hard work and perhaps even the difference between attending or not attending CMU. What a shame.
My daughter was so disappointed to see this. CMU was at the top of her list of out of state schools. While she understands it is a first world problem, she is bummed that we make too much to qualify for financial aid (can’t justify paying full price), and her hard work and great test scores won’t be rewarded. It seems like it gets harder every year to get merit aid.
May be they are willing to trade excellent middle class students for rich, very good students??? am sure, somebody ran the numbers and found that lot of students whose family income is >200K (for example - the poster in another thread who got accepted >300K annual income) and so they can still attract very good students!
In another thread, I mentioned similar sentiments regarding U of M charging so much for OOS. Mentioned that middle-middle class (around 100-120K) in most suburbs near big cities are getting the short end of the stick because of cost of housing & necessity to stay in such suburbs so that your kid to a decent public school? Sadly, some student (actually from a high income family!!) made negative comments about people in the doughnut (as jamgolf said) like our family…
Am not surprised if CMU is going this route as a private institution. Just check the cost of U of M, a very good school indeed, but a public school and on top of it a large school! Am sure there are hundreds and hundreds of students in many classes & still charging so much? Do not know how one can justify it?
IF the class size is small like in many small private schools - at least, it feels OK, somewhat? But, very good public schools soaking OOS students who are top students that want to come to your school is another matter! Love UCal Berkeley in this regard --the cost difference between In-State and Out of State is NOT exorbitant!